Two iPhone App developers have spotted what appears to be a hacking of the App store rankings by a rogue developer. The rankings in the books category of the US iTunes store features 40 out of 50 apps by the same app developer, Thuat Nguyen.

Whats more concerning is that it seems individuals iTunes accounts have been hacked to make mass purchases of that one developers apps.

At least I pinged Swordmaker so he can come here and tell me that I’m a liar, it’s all FUD and there is no problem. And not complain for some reason that a thread that dealt with Apple was not given to him immediately (although I don’t know the problem about that)...

6
posted on 07/04/2010 7:10:49 PM PDT
by PugetSoundSoldier
(Indignation over the Sting of Truth is the defense of the indefensible)

Thankfully I have no credit card on file with Itunes..learned my lesson a few years ago when I had my Visa in Itunes, someone was able to steal it and made about 200 bucks worth of purchases for apps and cheesy movies

Sounds like Apple needs a PCI audit. On average every account they’ve lost will cost slightly more than $200 to repair. Thats restitution, penalties to the card issuers, possible legal trouble from the card owners, and cost of replacing the cards.

Could be higher of course. If they’ve lost enough account they’ll be forced into some very expensive corrective actions.

12
posted on 07/04/2010 7:17:15 PM PDT
by driftdiver
(I could eat it raw, but why do that when I have a fire.)

My mother had someone clean out her bank account through Itunes a while back. Apple didn’t seem to care one way or the other but the bank cared a lot and gave her the money back and went after Itunes themselves.

13
posted on 07/04/2010 7:17:29 PM PDT
by cripplecreek
(Remember the River Raisin! (look it up))

My mother had someone clean out her bank account through Itunes a while back. Apple didnt seem to care one way or the other but the bank cared a lot and gave her the money back and went after Itunes themselves.

Those are the actions of a company that cares more about the bottom line than the satisfaction of their customers, not a company that's supposed to "Think Different"! ;)

14
posted on 07/04/2010 7:20:17 PM PDT
by PugetSoundSoldier
(Indignation over the Sting of Truth is the defense of the indefensible)

Not a new problem. The person who hacked into my apple account was some guy in China..I called Visa right away and canceled the card. This crap isn’t new..happens all the time. I don’t buy anything from Itunes anymore

Yep. But from post 13, it sounds like Apple will say “screw you” and ignore it, let the credit card company come after them. Just like a cold, calculating “bottom line oriented corporation”, not a caring entity.

Funny, I claimed that a week ago in another thread and was pilloried for it. Now we see that, in fact, Apple cares more about the bottom line than a given user’s satisfaction or experience. They’ll only care about an issue if it becomes large enough to affect enough users in a significant enough manner to threaten their profitability.

Apple: Think Different (about us; while we’re the same dollar-driven bastards as the rest of the industry we rail against, we still want you to ignore that and consider us blameless in all things)

17
posted on 07/04/2010 7:24:38 PM PDT
by PugetSoundSoldier
(Indignation over the Sting of Truth is the defense of the indefensible)

All companies that accept credit cards have agreements with the card companies. Penalties for stuff like this start at $500,000 dollars. Technically Apple is required to report incidents like this but they probably do it on an individual account basis thereby avoiding the repercussions.

20
posted on 07/04/2010 7:33:58 PM PDT
by driftdiver
(I could eat it raw, but why do that when I have a fire.)

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